Pressure Overwhelming v1.0 - Mischief and Misdirection

Bigguyforyou518 1758

If you are a connoisseur of the fine smell of human perspiration, then you may seriously want to consider giving this deck a taste.

No one puts more pressure on the grill faster than criminals, and Leela in particular will elicit mental groans from grizzled corp players: Great, now I have to double-ice everything.

So I decided to see just how many times I could make the corp groan. Not even death will let them off this ride.

Gang Sign/HQ Interface hits the board: Oh great, now I can't keep agendas in my hand.

DDoS hits the board: O...kay? Why would you...oh wait...oh god, now I have to TRIPLE ice up everything??

The Source hits the board: Now I can't score from hand, and have to pre-advance my agendas? Wait...I was ALREADY pre-advancing my agendas so that I could reinstall my ice when Leela bounced it! Now I have to PRE-pre advance them????

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Leela has always been slightly terrifying for her ability to create a cascade event of ice-bounces and agenda steals if the corp doesn't play really slowly, and this deck is designed to punish them for playing slowly, while at the same time making them play even slower.

The list may look disorganized, but almost every piece of the "combo" works all by itself, putting on pressure steadily throughout the game rather than only at the very end (unlike a big-rig Shaper).

The scattered decklist also makes it easy to misread by the corp - with so few breakers, they may convince themselves you're playing RetVersus's "Unbroken" Leela. When you drop your first Fall Guy, many people immediately start thinking Data Leak Reversal shenanigans. Nope. Feel free to encourage any and all of this - taunt them with the promise of cards that aren't actually in the deck.

Your goal is to make them focus on one strategy and then nail them with a completely different one. There are so many angles you can hit them from, that it's very difficult to really prepare for it.


General Piloting Strategy

Mulligan for two of these three things: econ, pressure (Gang Sign/The Source), or card-draw (Fisk Investment Seminar/Symmetrical Visage). Bonus points for an Inside Job, bonus points for an Account Siphon.

Hopefully the corp will play cautiously, allowing you to draw and install most of your combo-pieces. If it looks like they are rushing, try to use Inside Job or (if desperate) DDoS to snipe their agenda. While it's not game-deciding, stealing the first agenda is huge, as it allows you to always stay ahead of them with Gang Sign exchanges.

With Logos, Gang Sign, and Leela's ability, every agenda they manage to score will give you enormous swing opportunities unless they are absurdly well-prepared for it. Use Logos to pull out more combo pieces or other opportunistically useful cards (an Account Siphon or a Hades Shard at the right time can be especially devastating).

DDoS can be played as another piece of pressure, or as a surprise, allowing you to reach into one, two, three, or even four-ICE deep servers regardless of what ICE they have. Remember that it lasts for the whole turn.

There are better and worse times to play Fisk Investment Seminar, but in general, their hand is going to already be overflowing from your pressure AND all the goddamn ice you keep bouncing back into it, so it's rarely a bad move.

You DO have breakers, but they are absolutely horrible, and you don't have tutors for them. You should NOT be running frequently unless servers are completely exposed, rather, you should be sitting back, installing pressure pieces, and making tons of money off Kati Jones. Your breakers are for emergencies, or for very late in the game if you're behind in points and are all out of Inside Jobs and DDoS's. You absolutely have enough money to use them, just not repeatedly. Their fat install cost is actually a good thing, since it protects them from Power Shutdown.

Film Critic and Feedback Filter are there to give you a fighting chance against Jinteki, but you may still want to hold off on the Gang Signs. Film Critic can also save your The Source or New Angeles City Hall in a pinch, but it replaces Leela's ability, so try to rely instead on the secondary copies of those cards and the Fall Guys.


For achievement hunters, see if you can pull off the following (I've done it multiple times, it's not all that unreasonable):

  • Have DDoS and New Angeles City Hall installed
  • Have a Fisk Investment Seminar in hand
  • Have 2 or 3 Account Siphon's in hand (or draw them when you play the Investment Seminar in a sec
  • Get the corp to score an agenda on their last click (probably because you had The Source installed)
  • Bounce their HQ ice (as long as they have less than 3 of them) when they score
  • On your turn, play Fisk Investment Seminar, pop DDoS if there's still another piece of ice in HQ, and then Account Siphon them 2-3 times until they are completely broke, while removing the tags instantaneously with New Angeles City Hall
  • The corp begins their next turn with 0 credits and 9 cards in hand. You, on the other hand, are rich (and probably smug).
5 comments
21 Oct 2015 Bigguyforyou518

I've also ran this with a one-of Traffic Jam, which can oftentimes be a huge dud, but is quite good against NBN's Astrotrain and Titan's Atlastrain. Logos gives you the perfect combo for this - they score out their first train car, and this immediately pulls Traffic Jam right into your hand.

23 Oct 2015 Waltzard

I've been getting beaten up by this deck, or variations on it, a lot on Jinteki. Very embarassing to lose to a deck that doesn't install breakers, but its easy to do. This deck is strong.

The games I've won have been from either slow rolling a gov takeover (since Leela will generally let you score in expectation of her big turn), or her inside jobbing into ambushes.

Some things I saw on some version that I don't see here are Drive By (to avoid ambushes), and Turntable (so that if the corp bites the bullet and scores a big agenda with a little one in their hand you can swap so they are the worse off). I dunno if they would make your deck stronger, but you might want to try them.

18 Nov 2015 prozz

why no sneakdoor beta?

19 Nov 2015 Bigguyforyou518

@prozz You know, I don't really have a good reason for not including Sneakdoor Beta. I definitely have the rig space for it, and it fits the theme of constant pressure from every direction. Without reliable breakers, all it will probably cost the corp is a single to ice up archives and scare me off, but it could open up some strong cascade plays later on with DDoS and HQ Interface. I'll try it out, thanks for the suggestion.

7 Dec 2015 manveruppd

Don't many of your cards sort of counter each other? They score, you get a gang sign access, your NACH gets trashed. Or if you put an agenda on film critic so your Source and NACH don't get trashed, your ID ability won't fire. Is it a case of going the gang sign route against some decks, and the siphon/nach/source/critic route against different opponents? If so, which decks would you use each of them on?